Embassy Staff To Quit Saudi After Al-Qa'eda Kills Third Westerner (UK)

Non-essential British embassy staff and relatives were yesterday permitted to leave Saudi Arabia after a third Westerner in a week was killed.

The decision came as British Airways announced that its crews would no longer stay overnight in the country.

Barrie Peach, a British embassy spokesman in Riyadh, said: "We have taken the decision to authorise the voluntary departure of non-essential staff and dependents of all staff."

Mr Peach insisted that the decision was not a response to Saturday's killing of an American aeronautics engineer and the abduction of another, for which al-Qa'eda claimed responsibility yesterday.

He said it was rather "the result of consideration over the last week and consistent with the advisory against all but essential travel, which we are giving to travellers".

BA said it was eliminating its eight direct flights per week from London to Riyadh and Jeddah and re-routing them via Kuwait City. Staff would spend the night in Kuwait to avoid the journey from a Saudi airport to a hotel.

Fresh crews would board aircraft in Kuwait for the short flight to Saudi Arabia, where they will stop briefly before returning to London on the carrier's direct flights from Riyadh and Jeddah.

Al-Qa'eda claimed responsibility for both the drive-by killing of Kenneth Scroggs, employed by the United States defence contractor Lockheed Martin, and the kidnapping later on Saturday of Paul Johnson, 49, who is believed to work for the same company.

"Our fighters of the Fallujah Brigade in the Arabian peninsula have kidnapped an American, a Christian, Paul M Johnson Jr born in 1955 and working as an aeronautics engineer," said a statement signed "al-Qa'eda in the Arabian peninsula", published on an Arab website.

It threatened to treat Mr Johnson as US forces treated Iraqi prisoners - a reference to sexual and other alleged abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Several photographs of Mr Johnson, a copy of his work permit, driving licence and health card were shown on the website.

The statement said Mr Johnson was one of four experts in Saudi Arabia working on developing Apache helicopter systems and that Mr Scroggs worked in the same industry. "Everybody knows that these helicopters are used by the Americans, their Zionist allies and the apostates to kill Muslims, terrorising them and displacing them in Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq," said the statement. It said al-Qa'eda would release a videotape later with Mr Johnson's confessions and its demands.

Telephone numbers listed with the claim showed that Mr Johnson worked, possibly on a contract basis, with the Saudi company Advanced Electronics (AEC).

The kidnapping, the first of a Westerner in the kingdom, appeared to be a new tactic in a campaign of violence believed to be aimed at sabotaging the vital Saudi oil sector.

A US embassy spokesman said the mission was "working with Saudi authorities to try to find" the missing American. "We assume he is kidnapped, but we don't have any more information."

Security officials said an abandoned car found on Saturday near Imam University belonged to Mr Johnson. It was found to be booby-trapped and caught fire.

AEC identified itself as a Saudi company with about 400 employees, of whom 80 per cent are Saudi "and the rest from other nationalities, mainly Arab and south-east Asian, with a few Westerners".

Witnesses in the Malaz district of Riyadh where Mr Scroggs was killed said three men first shot him in the back as he pulled his car into the garage, then moved closer and fired more shots.

Terrorists have killed an Irish BBC cameraman and two American businessmen in Saudi Arabia in the past week. Frank Gardner, the BBC's security correspondent was still in a coma yesterday after being seriously wounded in the shooting on June 6.

The killings are part of a wave of attacks on foreigners that have included government targets and economic interests in the kingdom.

Al-Qa'eda admits that it intends to create an atmosphere of fear among the expatriate community that will disrupt the oil sector.

None of the gunmen in the shooting of Mr Gardner and Simon Cumbers, his cameraman, or that of the two Americans have been caught.

Security officials said Saudi forces stormed a suburban Riyadh house yesterday, arresting a man and confiscating a computer.

Embassy staff allowed to quit Saudi Arabia

Foreign Office scales back non-essential staff after kidnapping and spate of attacks on westerners

Oliver Burkeman in Washington
Monday June 14, 2004
The Guardian (UK)

Britain was radically scaling back its presence in Saudi Arabia last night as authorities combed the capital, Riyadh, for an American who was apparently kidnapped by al-Qaida within hours of another westerner being shot dead. The Foreign Office gave all non-essential staff and their families permission to return home, while British Airways said its flight crews would no longer spend nights in Saudi Arabia because of fears for their safety. BA will land in Kuwait instead, then make short trips to Riyadh.

The Islamist militants who claimed responsibility for abducting Paul Johnson, an employee of the defence firm Lockheed Martin, threatened to use him to avenge prison abuses by the US military.

"[We] reserve the legitimate right to deal with the Americans in the same way to avenge what the Americans did to our brothers in Abu Ghraib prison and Guantánamo," read a statement on the Sawt al-Jihad website, attributed to "al-Qaida in the Arabian peninsula".

As proof of the kidnap they included an image of a driving licence and business card apparently belonging to Mr Johnson, whom they called "an American Christian parasite".

One report from Riyadh last night said Saudi security officials had discovered a man's body, possibly a westerner's, but the police chief was quoted as denying the rumour.

Adam Ereli, deputy spokesman for the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, told the Guardian: "We've got a report of a missing American, and we have reports that the American is being held by groups claiming affiliation with al-Qaida ... but we haven't talked to the American, or to the kidnappers."

Nervousness among foreigners in Saudi Arabia was already at an unprecedented pitch after the killing of three westerners this month. One was a 36-year-old Irish television cameraman, Simon Cumbers, whose colleague, the BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner, remains seriously ill in hospital with bullet wounds.

Two days after Mr Cumbers was shot, Robert Jacobs, an American adviser to Saudi Arabia's national guard, was killed. And on Saturday evening a second US defence contractor, believed to be Kenneth Scroggs, was gunned down in a Riyadh suburb. Mr Scroggs worked for a firm selling electronic equipment to the military.

"The mojahedin were able... to kill another American working as a manager in the military sector," the Sawt al-Jihad website said. "They stalked him and then they killed him in his home."

The site also linked to a video purporting to show the execution of "the Jewish-American Robert Jacobs". In the footage a voice is heard screaming, "No, no, please", in English, then, after the sound of a gunshot, the body of a man slumps to the ground. Two men then fire at least 10 more shots at his body.

As the search for Mr Johnson continued into the night yesterday, Lockheed Martin refused to confirm or deny the kidnappers' claim that he played a senior role in developing one of the firm's most important products, the Apache attack helicopter.

"It is not a secret that these planes [sic] have long been used by the Americans and their Zionist allies and the apostates in killing Muslims, terrorising them and displacing them in Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq," the online statement read.

The defence firm, based just outside Washington in Bethesda in Maryland, would only say that Mr Johnson was an employee. "We have no first-hand knowledge of this kidnapping," a spokesman added.

Osama bin Laden has threatened to make 2004 a "bloody and miserable" year for Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest source of oil. The ruling royal family's closeness to the US outrages Islamist militants.

The British government denied that its decision to allow embassy staff to leave was a panicky response to the weekend's killing and abduction. "Having kept the decision under constant review, the decision has been taken to authorise voluntary departure," a spokesman said. "It's not based on what's happened in the last 24 hours, it's based on considering many things that have happened... It's up to them whether they want to leave or not."

The US evacuated all non-essential embassy staff from the country in April. "We're pretty down to the bone," an American spokesman in Riyadh said yesterday.

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